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Cyril Auran & Rudy Loock Laboratoire Savoirs, Textes, Langage

Appositive Relative Clauses and their Prosodic Realization in Spoken Discourse: a Corpus Study of Phonetic Aspects in British English. Cyril Auran & Rudy Loock Laboratoire Savoirs, Textes, Langage Université Lille III – CNRS UMR 8163. Introduction. Global project:

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Cyril Auran & Rudy Loock Laboratoire Savoirs, Textes, Langage

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  1. Appositive Relative Clauses and their Prosodic Realization in Spoken Discourse:a Corpus Study of Phonetic Aspects in British English Cyril Auran & Rudy Loock Laboratoire Savoirs, Textes, Langage Université Lille III – CNRS UMR 8163

  2. Introduction Global project: • relate discourse structure/functions & prosody • one specific syntactic structure : Appositive Relative Clauses (ARCs) • differences in pragmatic functions => differences in morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics, and in phonetic/phonological differences

  3. Methodology 2 spoken British English corpora: • Aix-MARSEC (cf. Auran, Bouzon & Hirst 2004): BBC recordings from the 1980s 53 different speakers 5h30 of natural sounding but scripted English • ICE-GB (cf. Greenbaum 1996): 1,000,000 words of written & spoken English from the 1990s Unscripted, spontaneous English sub-corpus Audio files unavailable for the present study

  4. Methodology Prosodic marking of elements within Loock’s (2003, 2005, 2006) taxonomy of ARCs depending on their discourse functions: • Discourse annotation: discourse function, information status of ARC and MC, syntactic characteristics • Prosodic annotation: semi-automatic analysis of the corresponding recordings using original scripts with Praat Today’s paper : preliminary results and tendencies concerning prosodic characteristics of 2 types of ARCs within Loock’s taxonomy

  5. 1. Appositive Relative Clauses and their Functions in Discourse • Positive definition of ARCs (see (1a) vs. Determinative Relative Clauses (1b)) in terms of discourse functions (1) a. The people of Oz, who were scared of the Witch of the East, were relieved when Dorothy’s porch crushed her to death. (ARC) b. The people of Oz who were scared of the Witch of the East were relieved when Dorothy’s porch crushed her to death. (DRC) • 3 main categories (see diagram in Proceedings p.20, Fig.1): • Relevance ARCs • Subjectivity ARCs • Continuative ARCs

  6. 1. Appositive Relative Clauses and their Functions in Discourse • Relevance ARCs : The speaker needs to convey information known by some of her/his addresees only : need for a compromise to optimize the relevance of the antecedent and/or the subject-predicate relation within the MC for no gratuitous effort (see Sperber & Wilson) (2) a. he was convinced # the battle # for the hearts # and minds of the people # was being won # especially # among the Ovambo # who form the majority # of SWAPO's support b. normally visitors to the state department require credentials # and even then # they have to pass through metal detectors # but twenty year old # Edward Steven Doster # managed to evade the security arrangements # and carry # a collapsible rifle # inside # and up to the seventh floor # where the secretary of state # has his offices

  7. 1. Appositive Relative Clauses and their Functions in Discourse • Subjectivity ARCs : The speaker needs to convey information that represents a comment, a judgement, or an assessment, by themselves or somebody else. The ARC establishes a discrepancy with the discourse topic (referential vs. interpretative level). (3) a. Israelis # have sympathy and liking for Americans # which is just as well # since the country is swarming # with transatlantic visitors b. most of them were made of nylon # and imported # which I found very very strange

  8. 1. Appositive Relative Clauses and their Functions in Discourse • Continuative ARCs : • Already defined by Jespersen (1970) and Cornilescu (1981) among others but definitions not interchangeable • Narrate an event successive to a first event (MC) : ‘make narrative time move forward’ with a possible causality link. (4) a. northern Scotland will have occasional light rain which will be followed during the day by colder but still mainly cloudy weather # with a few sleet and snow showers b. the first book he took from the library was Darwin's # Origin of Species # which inspired him with the dream of becoming a geologist …/…

  9. 1. Appositive Relative Clauses and their Functions in Discourse Hierarchisation of the informational contents (ARC+MC) different from other categories: narrative dynamism traditionally restricted to independent clauses (Depraetere 1996), informational contents on the same level Are continuatives independent clauses? (cf. Ross 1967, Emonds 1979, McCawley 1982, Fabb 1990 among others), who express this idea for ARCs as a whole. => Prosodic investigation : are ARCS realized with the intonation contour of an independent or subordinate clause?

  10. 2. Prosodic analysis | Fundamental prosodic conceptions • Di Cristo’s (2000) conception of prosody as a macro-system • 4 interrelated but independently analysable acoustically rooted systems (Auran 2004): • Tonal aspects • Temporal aspects • Intensity • Voice quality

  11. 2. Prosodic analysis | Prosodic representations Original F0 Resynthesized F0 (MOMEL)

  12. 2. Prosodic analysis | Prosodic dimensions • 2 types of dimensions within prosodic systems: • “linear” : succession of F0 ups and downs (or intensity) • “orthogonal” dimensions (level and span; cf. Ladd 1996) Differences in levels Differences in spans

  13. 2. Prosodic analysis | Data extractions • Discourse annotation • 50 ARCs : • 33 Relevance • 8 Subjectivity • 1 Continuative • 4 Relevance/Subjectivity • 2 Ambiguous continuative • 2 Unidentified • 5 discourse parameters: • ARC type • Position (initial/medial/final) • Information status of antecedent • Information status of ARC • Phrastic status of antecedent

  14. 2. Prosodic analysis | Data extractions • Prosodic annotation : 48 parameters • Tonal system (32): ARC mean F0 (Htz + semitones or ST), ARC minimum F0 (Htz + ST), ARC maximum F0 (Htz + ST), ARC register span (Htz + ST), ARC onset (Htz + ST), ARC offset (Htz + ST), previous IU mean F0 (Htz + ST), previous IU minimum F0 (Htz + ST), previous IU maximum F0 (Htz + ST), previous IU register span (Htz + ST), previous IU offset (Htz + ST), next IU mean F0 (Htz + ST), next IU minimum F0 (Htz + ST), next IU maximum F0 (Htz + ST), next IU register span (Htz + ST), next IU onset (Htz + ST), difference between previous IU offset and ARC onset (ST), difference between ARC offset and next IU onset (ST) • Temporal system (10): ARC duration (raw and normalised), previous IU duration (raw and normalised), next IU duration (raw and normalised), difference between previous IU normalised duration and ARC normalised duration, difference between ARC normalised duration and next IU normalised duration, silence duration before ARC, silence duration after ARC • Intensity system (6): mean of ARC global intensity, standard deviation of ARC global intensity, mean of previous IU global intensity, standard deviation of previous IU global intensity, mean of next IU global intensity, standard deviation of next IU global intensity = 53 observations per ARC

  15. 3. Results | ARCs as a whole • Tonal aspects: Register level in ARCs (-0.61 ST) significantly lower than in preceding (0.21 ST) and following (0.09 ST) IUs = typical of parentheticals (Wichmann 2000) But: Register span in ARCs not significantly different from preceding and following IUs Onset differential displays unusual positive value (mean = 2.24 ST), commonly associated with discourse discontinuity = atypical of parentheticals

  16. 3. Results | ARCs as a whole • Temporal aspects: No significant difference in speeh rates between ARCs and preceding/following IUs • Intensity: No significant differences between ARCs and preceding/following IUs => Complex interplay of production and interpretation constraints : ARCs show characteristics both traditional to and atypical of parentheticals

  17. 3. Results | Differences between types of ARCs ! Results presented here reflect but tendencies: need for formal statistical testing But results seem to indicate prosodic differences that can be interpreted as differences in discourse functions. In particular, results seem to indicate strongerdiscourse discontinuity for subjectivity ARCs.

  18. 3. Results | Differences between types of ARCs • Similar register levels and spans:

  19. 3. Results | Differences between types of ARCs • Higher onset value for subjectivity ARCs: relevance = 1.80ST subjectivity=2.23ST

  20. 3. Results | Differences between types of ARCs • Similar intensity span values • Lower intensity level values for subjectivity ARCs (59.78 dB vs. 61.04 dB)

  21. 3. Results | Differences between types of ARCs • Speech rate: • Relevance: -0.178 • Subjectivity: -0.043

  22. 4. Discussion • Surprisingly atypical characteristics of ARCs as a whole seem to go along with a syntactic behaviour and a semantic interpretation characteristic of independent clauses: • register span • intensity span • speech rate = typical of classical IUs realizing independent clauses = link with their discourse functions (especially continuative)?

  23. 4. Discussion • Relevance & Subjectivity ARCs show discourse discontinuity through high onset values. • Even stronger for subjectivity ARCs : more important rupture with discourse topic cf. shift between referential and interpretative levels : the information conveyed in a subjectivity ARC is somehow more « peripheral » than that in a relevance ARC. • Lower intensity level values for subjectivity ARCs: sometimes found within subjective episodes as an idiosyncratic strategy (Di Cristo et al. 2004)

  24. 4. Discussion • Clear-cut differences in speech rates, however, cannot be analysed in terms of discourse functions : influence of a syntactic parameter (sentential or non-sentential antecedent). As most subjectivity ARCs qualify a sentential antecedent (9 out of 10), the 2 parameters are difficult to separate. => Further research required

  25. 5. Conclusion This preliminary study clearly shows that various discourse functions associated with one specific syntactic structure give way to differences in prosodic realization. Prosodic markers can serve as input constraints influencing the pragmatic interpretation of one syntactic structure in discourse.

  26. 5. Conclusion This work also questions the traditional boundary between independent and embedded clauses, for which ARCs are clearly problematic.

  27. 5. Conclusion Further research: • Extended description of the prosodic characteristics of ARCs in relation to their discourse functions. • Tackle the independent/embedded status of ARCs from a prosodic point of view, through the study of continuative ARCs in particular.

  28. Thank you for your attention! cyril.auran@univ-lille3.fr rudy.loock@univ-lille3.fr

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